The present invention relates generally to increasing the bandwidth of a communications network and, more particularly, to increasing the bandwidth of a communications network using multiple physical connections having a single virtual address.
Present network architectures support various bandwidths. Because the demand for high bandwidth network architectures continually increases, new technologies continually respond to this demand. In some network implementations, a significant performance gap exists between more recent and somewhat dated technologies. This performance gap often results in substantial bandwidth differences. Some network applications require a greater bandwidth than older, existing network interfaces provide, but significantly less bandwidth than that provided by newer, high speed network interfaces.
For example, a network implementing an Internet Protocol (IP) may utilize an ethernet physical implementation to support the IP. At slower speeds, a regular ethernet architecture operates at approximately 10 Megabytes per second (Mbps). At the next substantial speed increase, a fast ethernet architecture operates at 100 Mbps. At the next substantial speed increase, a giga ethernet supports 1,000 Mbps or 1 Gigabytes per second.
Many video applications require more than the 100 Mbps bandwidth provided by fast ethernet and substantially less than the 1000 Mbps bandwidth provided by giga ethernet. Specifically, many video applications require a bandwidth of approximately 150 to 200 Mbps. Thus, it is desirable to provide a network having a bandwidth greater than the fast ethernet speeds but appreciably less than the giga ethernet speeds.
Most high level applications designed to communicate over a network using an internet protocol write and receive data from one IP address. Further, clients and servers communicate by addressing data to a particular IP address. While providing multiple, addressable physical connections between clients and servers can increase network bandwidth, the high level applications would require modification to utilize the multiple addresses and physical connections. Thus, it is desirable to increase the network bandwidth so that high level applications already installed on clients and servers can communicate over multiple physical connections using one IP address rather than multiple IP addresses.
The present invention is directed to a network interface including a server communicating at a predetermined high bandwidth via a server physical network interface. The server supports a server high level application. A client communicates at a predetermined low bandwidth via a plurality of client physical network interfaces, where the low bandwidth is less than the high bandwidth. The client supports a client high level application. The client also includes a virtual network interface utilized by server and client applications communicating over the network. A switch communicates with the server at the high bandwidth and communicates with the client at the low bandwidth to enable and control communications between the server and the client.
This invention is also directed to a method for increasing bandwidth across multiple network interfaces including providing a high level application at each of a network client and a network server and providing a single physical connection between the server and the network. The method also includes providing a plurality of physical connections between the client and the network and providing a virtual interface between the plurality of physical connections and the client high level application. The method further includes communicating between the client and the server by utilizing the virtual interface.
For a more complete understanding of the invention, its objects and advantages, reference should be made to the following specification and to the accompanying drawings.